Tropical Connections
Susie Vereker
© Susie Vereker 2009
Susie Vereker has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 2009 by Severn House.
This edition published in 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
One
Lonely in her new existence, Claire stood on the balcony staring into the oriental dusk. Even now the heat was oppressive, and she was still unused to the strange exotic smells – incense, spices, charcoal, overripe fruit and overripe drains. She took a step forward and smiled when she saw the good-natured chaos below.
The streets were packed with old grey buses belching exhaust fumes, ancient Japanese cars, open three-wheeler taxis and hordes of rickety bicycles. Pedestrians – some in colourful sarongs, some in western dress – strolled through the traffic to chat with friends or bargain at the noodle stalls. Occasionally a driver would hoot his horn, but no one seemed impatient or angry in this more or less permanent jam.
For a moment she thought of going down to join the crowds, but she felt too pallid white, too conspicuous. Then whining mosquitoes began to home in on her fresh European blood. So many of them, everywhere. She was about to flee back into the air-conditioned apartment when something brushed against her legs. She jumped, rigid with irrational fears. Turning, she found herself looking down into the eyes of a small tortoiseshell cat.
She smiled in relief. ‘How on earth did you get up here? Where did you come from?’
The cat indicated that it required her to open the French window.
‘No, really, cat, I’ve just arrived. I can’t cope with visitors.’
The cat stood its ground. Claire studied the access to the balcony. Could it have climbed up that fragile-looking creeper?
‘Oh, all right then,’ she said. ‘I suppose it’d be too dangerous for you to go back whatever way you came. I’ll just have to shoo you out the front.’
But the cat had other ideas. After a thorough inspection of the apartment, including all the half-unpacked boxes and suitcases, it disappeared into the large fitted wardrobe in her bedroom.
‘It’s filthy in there. Come out, cat, for God’s sake.’
She peered in, but the cat had vanished. The wardrobe cupboard was large, and behind the hanging rail was a deep, dark space that sloped under the eaves of the building. Cursing under her breath, she crouched down on her hands and knees, but couldn’t see anything. Where was her torch? God knows, somewhere in one of about fifty boxes and anyway it probably had a flat battery.
Blindly she felt around with her hand. ‘Hope there isn’t a dead mouse,’ she muttered. Or a dead rat. Or a live one. Horrors! She wriggled quickly backwards at the thought, but as she did so her hand brushed something. Another unnecessarily scary moment – though it seemed to be just a rather solid bundle of paper. Whatever it was, she refused to check out this black hole again until she had plenty of light and industrial rubber gloves. The flat had been left pretty clean, mostly, but obviously no one had bothered with the nooks and crannies.
There was a sudden rustle, but it was only the cat, covered in cobwebs and unharmed.
‘About time,’ said Claire with a sigh of relief.
Evading her, it padded purposefully towards the kitchen where it sat staring pointedly at the fridge.
She smiled again. ‘I’m not inviting you to dinner, if that’s what you’re hinting at. Where I come from, it’s bad manners to feed other people’s cats.’
The cat remained seated, patiently alternating its gaze between the fridge and the floor, obviously thinking her hostess as thick as a haddock. It was at this point that Claire remembered a long meandering note from the previous tenant of the flat, a former employee of her boss. She took the note out of the drawer. On page 4, paragraph 2, she read: ‘Our maid left and we gave our cat, Grace, to the caretaker, but she may show up.’
‘Grace?’ ventured Claire. ‘That’s a very elegant name for a cat. So this is your flat? You must think I’m pretty inhospitable. How about some milk then?’ She took a carton out of the fridge and poured a generous helping into a bowl.
Unimpressed, the cat wrinkled its black nose.
Claire sighed. ‘Oh, all right. I’ll feed you just this once. We’ve got something in common, I suppose – displaced persons. Will this hamburger do? It was going to be my supper, but I’m not very hungry anyway. No, you must eat it outside. I suppose you won’t mind this plastic plate, madam?’
The cat weaved around her legs as she lured it to the front door and put the plate on the landing.
‘You needn’t think this is going to happen again,’ she said as the cat devoured her dinner with delicate greed.
Shutting the door quickly, Claire returned to her muddled unpacking. She reminded herself that she was meant to be an organized and efficient woman – a mature woman who made career moves. She had left behind her old messy life and begun a brave new one, finding a new job abroad, an interesting job in her own field.
Damn it, why were these boxes so impossible to open and why had she brought all this unnecessary junk with her? She found the lost scissors again and ripped open yet another carton. Why had the removal men packed everything in six layers of paper, even a single worn-out flip-flop? Where was the waste bin, for God’s sake?
Suddenly amongst her art books, she came across a photo of Leo. She stared at it for a minute and then dumped it in the bin beside the stray flip-flop. That was where it belonged.
It was dark now, so she drew the curtains and advised herself to pull herself together. A drink might stiffen her upper lip. Searching through the cupboards, she found some Mekhong whisky and a cleanish glass. She was about to turn on the kitchen tap when she remembered the warnings about typhoid, or cholera, or worse. She hadn’t yet arranged supplies of bottled water, so it would have to be whisky diluted by lukewarm Coca-Cola from an unfamiliar Asian can.
She grimaced as she sipped her drink. She didn’t even like Scotch, let alone this raw rice whisky. Of course, she’d rather have had a huge glass of wine, but apparently wine suffered in the heat and soon tasted of old socks if you didn’t keep it in an air-conditioned store, or so she’d been told. And it was ridiculously expensive, taxed to the hilt, better stick to spirits, people said. Funny how many old Eastern hands had come out of the woodwork and proffered seemingly endless advice.
A small gecko darted across the ceiling, before stopping, motionless. Of course it wouldn’t fall. They never do, but all the same she watched it out of the corner of her eye. Shuddering, she remembered a much bigger monitor lizard she’d seen swimming lazily in an open sewage ditch. Harmless too, apparently.
She wandered slowly around the over-furnished yet alien flat – a flat generously provided by her new employer, a man she was yet to meet. It had all been arranged through colleagues on the old-boy network over the telephone, by email and letter. She had been employed to catalogue
the Buddhist art collection of Jean-Louis Durant-Vandenberg, a rich, gay Swiss, a connoisseur, a cosmopolitan man of culture, and everybody at Sotheby’s assured her he was a very good chap. Well, most people had said that. But it might have been wiser to have met him first, she thought. And was it really such a good idea to have travelled quite so far from England and burned every single one of her fragile boats?
*
Johnny Case contemplated tweaking one of his wife’s swollen breasts but decided against the idea. She’d probably say he was unhygienic, or make one of her unpleasant little cracks about not knowing where he’d been. Instead, he would just drop in on that sexy-looking woman who’d moved into the apartment below. He assumed she was single and therefore very much available. He’d already found out her name. After a small tip, Mr Soi, the caretaker, had been forthcoming. Miss Glay Dow-ing, as he pronounced it, was English, had a six-month lease and was living alone. Johnny decided that a friendly welcome from an experienced expat Brit was just what Claire Downing needed. She’d have no idea about the subtleties of life in Southeast Asia.
‘Just going to do the right thing and say hello to the new neighbour, darling.’ For a moment Deborah turned her large brown eyes towards him and then returned her gaze to the baby in her arms. Johnny resented the fact that she never looked at him with the same tenderness.
‘Go ahead, honey,’ she said. ‘Claire seems like a nice person. I met her in the elevator and told her we’d like to invite her over to dinner. Why don’t you fix it? If you have any free time, that is?’
‘I’m sure I’ll have time to be kind to Claire.’
‘I’m sure you will,’ said Deborah laconically.
Americans were reputed not to understand irony, but his wife seemed to major in the use of it. Johnny often had the feeling that she understood too much about many things, especially his private social life. The thought sent a frisson down his spine. He wondered if he could really afford to pay for a flat for his new mistress nearer to the city centre. She probably wouldn’t permit it anyway, he said to himself. These upper-class Maising career girls were so proud and secretive. They didn’t like to admit to having a foreign lover.
He walked down Lotus Court’s marble stairs past the dusty potted palms to ring Claire’s doorbell. As he waited, he smoothed back his greying hair, which tended to frizz in the humidity, so he kept it short and neat. He tucked his white shirt into his well-pressed beige trousers and smiled to himself. He was confident of his own lean, dark good looks and had never found his lack of height a disadvantage – particularly with nice small women like Claire. He wondered if she had yet found a chap or whether she might like a discreet fling. He smiled again as he thought of how frightfully convenient it would be. Much easier than trailing to the other end of town to visit his current lover.
He was still smirking when Claire opened the door. After making the usual introductory noises and commiserating about the stress of moving, he insinuated himself into her sitting room and accepted a large whisky, only his third that evening. Rice whisky. Oh dear, never mind, she’d learn.
He launched into the long briefing with which he regularly honoured newcomers. His settling-in talk, he called it. He enjoyed giving advice, and when the recipient of his wisdom was an attractive and attentive female, his settling-in talk would last some time.
‘You’ll find it very different from the good old UK,’ he began. ‘But the locals are very friendly, at least superficially, and they’re polite and cheerful, though it’s hard to get to know ’em well. The ones connected with the Prince are pretty snobbish and grand. Luckily, my wife and I are right in with the set who went to university in England. I’m the Secretary of the Oxford and Cambridge Dining Club.’
He paused to make sure that Claire had absorbed the importance of all this information. Yes, he’d been right. She was quite a looker in a slightly prim sort of way. Apart from the mouth. Not a prim mouth, he thought. Early to mid-thirties, he reckoned. Fair hair, pretty colour, a bit wild though. Skinny figure, good legs. Smallish tits – just about enough, probably, to make it worth while.
He smiled and continued. ‘I myself was born in this part of the world, Father having been an expat banker too, and so it’s easier for a chap like me to understand what makes ’em tick. Very proud and independent like many island people. You see, they’ve never been colonized, in spite of being fairly near Indo-China. I suppose in colonial days the islands were too small and remote to be worth conquering. No decent harbour in those days either. Well, the Japanese were here in the war, of course, and now they’re starting to invade the place economically, but basically Maising has stayed independent. Being Buddhist, they didn’t want to join Malaysia when it was formed, and so they’ve always been rather poor and Third World.’
‘Interesting,’ said Claire, bending down to pick up a notebook from the floor.
Johnny revised his assessment. Not so skinny after all. A nice round bottom.
He shook his head. ‘Point is that nowadays Maising is an up and coming place: the harbour’s been improved. I’m sure you’d like to see round the port. The harbour master is a friend of mine. I’ll fix it up.’
‘That’s kind. Is there a regular ferry service to the other islands?’
‘Regular?’ He wrinkled his long nose. ‘Hardly. Not known for regularity in this part of the world. No, Maising city is pretty developed, even too developed, as you see, but up-country and on the other islands, it’s very basic. Best way to explore the area is by boat. You must come for a sail.’
‘Thank you.’ Claire pushed back her hair. ‘Did you say you were a banker? Which bank are you with?’
‘Selby’s. Not as affected as some by the world banking problems, luckily. But I don’t suppose you’ve heard of us.’
She hesitated for a moment. ‘As it happens, I have.’
‘Well, then, as you know, we’re pretty much concentrated in Southeast Asia and the Far East. Now, where was I? Probably boring you about the history of the country. I expect you’d rather know about the local crafts and where to buy batik, and all about the good old International Women’s Club. Deborah, my wife, she’s American but quite Anglicized, almost normal,’ he chortled, as he always did when making this little joke. ‘She wants me to ask you to sups. She’ll give you the low-down from the feminine point of view.’
‘How kind.’
He shot her a long look from underneath his hooded eyelids and then tried a direct question. ‘Do you have a husband or boyfriend coming out to join you then?’
‘No,’ she said shortly.
Bingo! Perfect – a beautiful, lonely blonde. And just the right age, not too young to be picky and not too old to be picked. Bit pale though. Could well be a genuine blonde, in fact.
‘What brought you to this far flung part of the world, Claire? You don’t mind if I call you Claire, do you?’
‘No, of course not. As for the job, I’m going to work for a Swiss called Durant-Vandenberg. He’s an art expert and dealer. I was at Sotheby’s before I came here, you see.’
‘Vandenberg? Really? What’s a woman like you doing with a shady chap like that?’
‘I am an art historian and he’s an expert in his field and a very interesting man, I’m told,’ she said defensively. ‘I haven’t met him yet.’
‘You haven’t? Well, well.’ He grinned and rubbed his hands together. ‘Very interesting man, if you like that sort of thing. Just be careful what you collect.’
Seeing her blank expression, he turned the conversation to the British Sports Club where he played squash and tennis. He would take her down there to join. She’d meet all the Brits. The club had an excellent restaurant where they served good old British food – like bangers with real baked beans. Great stuff. To join she would need two sponsors, but he would tell one of his chums to vouch for her. She could leave it all to him. He’d give her a head start in Maising expat society.
Claire murmured something about wanting to meet locals, but he
assured her that the British Club was where she’d be most at home, no doubt about it.
Meanwhile, of course, she’d need a maid. Clear up this mess in no time.
When Claire also expressed doubts about that idea, he assured her that absolutely everyone had a maid, however low their salary. Best to ask his wife, she’d know what to do, hiring servants being women’s work.
Eventually, when he thought he’d done enough groundwork, he stood up to leave. She hadn’t responded to the more probing looks he’d given her, but then that reserved sort of woman rarely did at first. Might come through a few months later if he made the effort. Never know. Not that it was worth bothering with reluctant Western females on this island when there were so many local young lovelies who knew how to treat a man.
As he opened the front door, a cat dashed in. ‘I know that bloody animal. Damn nuisance. Gets in everywhere, used to belong to the Haynes – disappeared in a sudden puff of smoke those people. Bit odd, but then I always thought he was a bit of a shady chap – wife was OK though,’ he said. ‘As for the cat, I should complain to the caretaker, his responsibility. Get him to dispose of it. Probably be glad to take it off your hands. They eat cat meat here, some of them.’
*
When she had finally managed to sweep Johnny out of the front door, Claire heaved a sigh of relief.
‘Yuk, what a creep!’ she said to the cat, who was sitting in the middle of the room, complacently washing its face. ‘All right, Grace, you win. Wait here. I’ll go and see Mr Soi.’
She found him eventually, squatting on the back doorstep and smoking a cigarette, or something similar. The caretaker bowed obsequiously. ‘Yes, yes, you want to buy my cat, madame? Velly, velly nice cat. Good cat. Catch many mouse, rat, kill cockroach too. Good cat expensive, but I give you special price.’
Without bothering to bargain, Claire paid the sum demanded of her. Barely concealing his astonishment, Mr Soi counted the green notes and quickly put them in his pocket. ‘You want more animal, madame? I get you dog, or nice bird. Have friend sell many special parrot.’
Tropical Connections Page 1
